Alois Hába

Hába, Alois

Born June 21, 1893, in Vizovice; died Nov. 18, 1973, in Prague. Czech composer, musicologist, and teacher. Honored Artist of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (1964).

Hába studied under V. Novák and F. Schreker. From 1923 to 1945 he was head of the department of quarter-tone and sixth-tone music at the Prague Conservatory; he held the same post at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1946 to 1949. His students included K. Reiner, J. Pauer, M. Ristić, and M. Kolessa. From 1945 to 1948, Hába directed the Fifth of May Grand Opera, now the Smetana Theater.

Hába was an originator of the quarter-tone system. A representative of the Czech musical avant-garde of the 1920’s and 1930’s, he composed numerous works with a progressive ideological content, including the operas The Mother (1931, libretto by the composer) and The New Land (1936, based on the novella by Gladkov). His other compositions include A Working Day (1932), a choral cycle written in honor of the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia; the cantata For Peace (1949); chamber music, including 16 string quartets; and vocal works, including choral works for children. Hába was the author of The Harmonic Foundations of the Quarter-tone System (1922), My Path to Quarter-tone and Sixth-tone Music (1971, in German), a monograph on V. Novák, and articles for the Czech and foreign press.

These were the years of Schreker's greatest success and it may come as a surprise that his students, such as Krenek, Alois Haba, Felix Petryek, and Karol Rathaus, were offered UE contracts well before those of Schoenberg, including Anton Webern and Alban Berg.

In 1912 Schreker was appointed to the Vienna Academy where he had a distinguished class of composition students and performers, among whom were Alois Haba, Jascha Horenstein, Egon Kornauth, Ernst Krenek, Artur Rodzinski, and Josef Rosenstock.

The same year saw the launch of separate English, German and Russian six-page pamphlets dedicated to contemporary Czech and Slovak composers, the first one dealing with Jan Cikker, followed over the next few years by titles devoted to Alois Haba, Pavel Borkovec, Jan Kapr, Vladimir Sommer, Eugen Suchon, Petr Eben, Jan Hanus, Miloslav Kabelac, with more pamphlets, some of them updated, with the total print run of 5-10 thousand copies, ensiling annually.

Whether as a compendious interpretation of ancient Greek theory of intonation and intervals, as a signal contribution to contemporary music theory, as an approach to the systematic study of tuning systems (taking its place alongside the twentieth-century classics of Julian Carrillo, Alois Haba, and Partch), or as a stepping-stone from music's past to its possible futures, Divisions of the Tetrachord is an indispensable resource for the serious student of music.

A student of Alois Haba, he lectured in 1927 on the Czech avant-garde to Arnold Schoenberg's composition students at the Preussische Akademie der Kunste, and through Scherchen achieved a certain notoriety for a chamber suite drawn from music for Jean Cocteau's Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel.

Five years later, in 1935, he completed his studies at the department of quarter-tone music with the composer and theoretician Alois Haba, the creator of the concept of the microtonal and "athematic" music style, who also gave Pone private lessons and was his mentor at the time preceding his studies at the Prague Conservatory.

The biggest mistake is the cover-photo, a portrait of Alois Haba in some kind of holographic or other version (it is based on a detail from the photo on the Supraphon Haba-Centenary set of 1993), which is more intimidating and off-putting than eye-catching.

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